Freedom Trail Quilt Project

The Freedom Trail Quilt project and the display of the quilts in the Museum of Connecticut History represent an acknowledgement by public and private groups of the great significance of the Freedom Trail story within the history of Connecticut and the nation.

South Western 21

South Western 21

Lantern Block

The North Star and lantern are the key elements of the logo of the Connecticut Freedom Trail.

This cemetery opened in 1796 and replaced the Old Burial Ground located on the New Haven Green. Many New Haven residents who were well known in American life are buried here. The cemetery includes the graves of those active in the abolition movement, as well as those associated with African American history.

Was part of New Haven's port system before the steamship changed the way goods were brought into the United States. The life-size working replica of the Amistad is docked here. This ship offers exhibitions and programs on African American history, and sails to other ports to participate in events.

Was founded in 1820 under the direction of Simeon Jocelyn. In 1829, it affiliated with Congregationalists and became known as Temple Street Congregational Church. Its first African American minister was James W.C. Pennington, and from 1841 to 1858 Amos Gerry Beman was the pastor. Both were well-known African American leaders in the United States. During Beman's ministry, the growth of the church made it necessary to relocate the congregation to a new building. By 1836, the church moved to Dixwell Avenue, where it developed numerous community programs under the Reverend Edward Goin. These programs later became associated with the Dixwell Community House. The present structure was built in 1968.

Varick African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was organized in 1818 when more than 30 African Americans left the Methodist Church to form their own congregation. In 1820, it became officially affiliated with the Zionist church movement of James Varick, who helped lead a separation from white Methodism because African American preachers were not permitted to be ordained. By 1841, the church had a building on Broad Street, but it relocated in 1872 to Foote Street. In 1908, the present building was constructed, and it was here that Booker T. Washington made his last public speech before his death in 1915. The church is included in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company National Register Historic District.

Hannah Gray was a laundress and seamstress who used part of her income to promote the antislavery movement and support her church. Through her will, Gray donated her house at 158 Dixwell Avenue (no longer extant) to be used as a refuge for "indigent Colored Females". Because her will did not include funding to administer the home, it was almost sold for delinquent taxes in 1904. It was saved by the Women's Twentieth Century Club, an organization for African American Women, which took responsibility for maintaining it. The present Hannah Gray house at 235 Dixwell Avenue, acquired in 1911 and accommodating more residents than the original structure, continues in operation in accordance with its founder's goals. The building is included in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company National Register Historic District.

Constructed in the 1850s, this building was acquired in 1938 by Jewish immigrant workers and used as a social and cultural center for community groups, including African Americans. New Haven's first interracial drama group and first integrated basketball team were started here. During its early years, the Center succeeded in getting African Americans admitted to some craft unions in the city; it also attempted, without success, to force the Connecticut Bus Company to hire black drivers. Activities of the Center on behalf of African Americans were forerunners of initiatives which, 25 years later, ended some racial injustices in society.

This building was originally known as the North Church (Congregational) which merged with the Third Church (Congregational) in 1884 to create the United Church. Several members of the two earlier congregations were abolitionists who also assisted New Haven's free black community. They included Roger Sherman Baldwin, Nathaniel and Simeon Jocelyn, and the Reverend Samuel Dutton. Baldwin, a lawyer, was active in the defense of the Amistad Africans and is commemorated by a plaque inside the church. The church is included in the New Haven Green National Historic Landmark District.

The church had a congregation that was involved in developing support for the Amistad captives. It was founded in 1638, and beneath the present 1812-1814 building is a cemetery dating back to colonial times. The property is a National Landmark.

The former Goffe Street School was built in 1864 to provide a much-needed facility for African American children. It closed ten years later, after Connecticut ended racially segregated education, and many of its former students attended predominantly white public schools. Subsequently used by a number of organizations working with the African American community, the building was purchased in 1929 by the Grand Lodge of Prince Hall Masons of Connecticut. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is known as Widow's Son Lodge #1.

Located throughout Connecticut are graves of the African Americans who fought in the American Revolution. However, stones or markers seem to exist for only a few of them. In the town cemetery in Milford, to the right of the long driveway, is a monument dedicated to American Revolutionary War prisoners whom townspeople tried to save when the prisoners were abandoned by the British. At the foot of this monument is a large white stone listing the names of Milford's soldiers who served in the war.

The noted abolitionist Simeon Jocelyn developed Trowbridge Square in the 1830s in partnership with architect and builder Isaac Thompson. The area was established for New Haven's low-income working class population and was meant to be a model egalitarian residential community populated by African Americans and whites.

This memorial, dedicated in 1992, pays tribute to Joseph Cinque and the other Africans who escaped slavery in 1839 by commandeering the Spanish ship Amistad. The memorial was created by Ed Hamilton and stands where the New Haven Jail was located at the time the African captives were housed there.

Memorial to six black soldiers from Milford who served in the Revolutionary War: Job Caesar, Pomp Cyrus, Juba Freeman, Peter Gibbs, William Sower, Congo Zado. Dedicated at a special ceremony in 1976, it is displayed in front of the First Baptist Church, an African American Congregation.

Nero Hawley was one of numerous slaves in Connecticut who joined the Continental Army during the American Revolution and were freed at the end of the war. He served at Valley Forge, and his life is featured in the book From Valley Forge to Freedom, which also notes other areas of Trumbull associated with Hawley's life. Hawley died in 1817 at the age of 75. Riverside Cemetery is a short walk off Daniel's Farm Road and near Route 127. Hawley's grave is in the center row, near the far end of this small cemetery.

Walter's Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church has been located at this site since 1882. When its original structure was destroyed by fire in 1951, the current building was erected on the surviving foundation. The building is one of the few reminders of an earlier African American Community known as "Little Liberia." Made up of free blacks, former slaves and their descendants, and migrants from the South, this community supported two churches, a school, and a number of individual homes

Battell Chapel New Haven J.P. MorganRepresents the role that Yale Divinity School faculty and students played in assisting the Amistad Africans, and offers an exhibition of relevant materials maintained by Yale.

The Freedom Trail Quilt project and the display of the quilts in the Connecticut State Library's Museum of Connecticut History represent an acknowledgement by public and private groups of the great significance of the Freedom Trail story within the history of Connecticut and the nation.

James Mars was born into slavery in Connecticut in 1790 and became free through the gradual emancipation law enacted by the state in 1784. Mars wrote a pamphlet about his experiences, Life of James Mars, a Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut, which can be found in the book Five Black Lives. Mars was freed at the age of 21 and spent much of his life in Hartford and Norfolk, Connecticut. Always active in the church, he became a deacon of Talcott Street Congregational Church in Hartford. Mars helped organize meetings to promote freedom for slaves and to improve conditions for free African Americans. In 1842, he petitioned the Connecticut General Assembly in an effort to gain the right to vote, which was denied African Americans in the state's constitution. Mars lived his later years in Norfolk and supplied information on the history of that town which appeared in the 1900 publication History of Norfolk, written 20 years after his death. Mars is buried alongside his father, Jupiter Mars, who served in the American Revolution. Nearby are graves of the Freedom family, who are also mentioned in the above town history. These stones are located to the rear and left of the first entrance into the cemetery. To the right of this entrance, and near the wall next to Old Colony Road, is the grave of Alanon Freemen, who served in the all-black Connecticut Twenty-Ninth Regiment in the Civil War. The quilt square incorporates a poem written by James Mars, "God Never Made a Slave":

Marian Anderson was born in Philadelphia in 1902 and as a young woman was noted for her singing ability. Finding few opportunities to perform in the United States, she won recognition in Europe. After her return to America, she sang in concerts in New York City and at the White House. When she was denied permission to sing at Washington D.C.'s Constitution Hall in 1939, the government arranged for her to perform at the Lincoln Memorial before some 75,000 listeners. A year later she purchased her home in Danbury, known as "Marianna Farms", where she and her husband raised five children. She lived here for some 50 years. Near the house is a small building that she used as her rehearsal studio. Named a delegate to the United Nations in 1958, Anderson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. She retired from concert performances in 1964 but continued to be active in various issues and causes. Her autobiography, My Lord, What a Morning, was published in 1956. In 1999, the company developing Mariana Farm donated the studio to the Danbury Museum and it was moved to the Museum's property on Main Street. A permanent exhibit celebrating Marian Anderson's musical legacy is being installed.

Provided second-floor quarters for the Amistad Africans on their arrival in Farmington, but the space was later set up as a school where they attended classes for five hours a day, six days a week. Although the property is privately owned, it is operated as Your Village Store.

One of the most famous abolitionists in America was John Brown, whose armed raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 for the purpose of ending slavery, foreshadowed the government's war two years later to achieve the same end. Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut in 1800 at this site. The house was destroyed by fire in 1918, but the property is maintained by the John Brown Association. The image of Brown's house is incorporated in the City of Torrington's seal. Pikes used by John Brown and his men in the Harper's Ferry raid were made by the Collins Company, located in Collinsville section of Canton. The Canton Historical Museum has one of these pikes on display.

Supported the Amistad Case through its members who provided clothing, housing, education, and Christian teaching to the Africans while they lived in Farmington awaiting funds to return to Africa. The church is a National Historic Landmark.

Riverside Cemetery is where Foone, one of the Africans on the Amistad, is buried. He drowned while swimming in Pitkin Basin. Beyond the Indian Obelisk was the Farmington Canal and open meadow where the Africans raised crops.

Is now the Art Guild. Its upper floor was rented to abolitionist groups for meetings. It was originally located at the present site of the Porter Memorial on Main Street and is now owned by the First Church of Christ, Congregational.

Was the location of the primary home for the Amistad Africans during their stay in Farmington. Austin F. Williams, a leading abolitionist in town, had a building constructed as a residence for the Africans. Shortly after this, he built his own home and later converted the first structure to a carriage house. The property is privately owned and not open to the public.

Milo Freeland is credited with being the first African American to volunteer for the Union Army during the Civil War. He did this as a member of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the subject of the film, Glory. His picture appears in the book, A Brave Black Regiment by Luis F. Emilio. Originally a resident of Sheffield, Massachusetts, Freeland died in 1883 while living in East Canaan. The stone that now marks his grave was placed in Hillside Cemetery, Route 44, East Canaan in 1996 following a rededication ceremony in his honor, and is located in Lot B8 to the rear of the cemetery, immediately to the right of the center driveway.

Located at the corner of Hopkins and Pearl Streets, this building was once known as the Pearl Street Neighborhood House. It served as a settlement house for Waterbury's African American community, particularly migrants arriving from the South after the First World War. It continued to be a settlement house and community center from the 1920s into the 1980s and is now used for cultural events in conjunction with its owner, the Zion Baptist Church. The Waterbury NAACP was founded in this building in 1942, and it was once the home of the city's Urban League.

Belonged to the minister of the Congregational Church and provided a home for one of the three African children in the Amistad group. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was organized here. It is a private residence and not open to the public.

The Redeemer's African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church represents a movement also evident elsewhere in Connecticut: the joining together of African denominations in town to establish a church which nurtured black leadership and generated community support. Organized in 1903, the congregation built its church structure a year later. Throughout this century, members have been leaders in Plainville and have provided a voice for the black community.

The Freedom Trail Quilt project and the display of the quilts in the Connecticut State Library's Museum of Connecticut History represent an acknowledgement by public and private groups of the great significance of the Freedom Trail story within the history of Connecticut and the nation.

To the rear of this cemetery are the graves of local African Americans including Fanny Beman, the mother of Amos Beman, one of Connecticut's best known African American civil rights leaders of the nineteenth century. There are also graves here of men who fought in the Connecticut Twenty-Ninth Regiment and other African American units of the Civil War. Among them is James Powers, who is listed on the Civil War monument located on the green at South Main Street near the Benjamin Douglas House.

In 1819, Hartford's African Americans, rejecting being seated in the galleries of white churches, began to worship by themselves in the conference room of the First Church of Christ. Later established as the African Religious Society, the group built a church at 30 Talcott Street in 1826 and soon became associated with the Congregational Church. In 1840, the church opened one of only two district schools in the city where African American children could study free of harassment by white children and teachers at the church's school. Also associated with it were Amos Beman and James Pennington, two of the most prominent African American leaders in the United States. On November 19, 1953 Talcott Street Congregational church merged with Mother Bethel Methodist Church to become the present Faith Congregational Church. The building at 2030 Main Street was purchased and renovated, with the dedication taking place on June 13, 1954. The church is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The nation's oldest continuously operating public art museum, houses the Amistad Foundation African-American Collection. This unique collection of Americana is comprised of over 6,000 art objects, posters, broadsides, photographs, memorabilia, and rare books that evidence the many contributions of African Americans to American culture. The Amistad Foundation provides for public access to this collection, along with changing exhibitions and special interpretative programs, including scholarly and public forums and cultural performances, during the year. The Wadsworth Atheneum also maintains the Fleet Gallery of African-American Art to complement exhibitions in the Amistad Gallery and to further illuminate the role of African American visual artists in American art and culture. The Atheneum is on the National Register of Historic Places and open to the public.

Paul Robeson was an All-American football player, a Phi Beta Kappa scholarship student at Rutgers University Law School, and a graduate of the Columbia University Law School. An African American of extraordinary artistic gifts, he later became an internationally known actor and singer, and he was an activist in civil rights causes. Robeson purchased this house during the height of his popularity and used it to entertain his guests. His family owned it from March 1940 until December 1953. Robeson's refusal to remain silent about racism in the United States, along with his ardent desire for full human justice, resulted in his being ostracized by American society. He was barred from appearing at concert halls, had his passport revoked, and saw his name removed from football records he had established. He spent the last 15 years of his life abroad or as a recluse in Philadelphia, dying in January 1976. In 1995, Robeson was posthumously included in the National Football Foundations College Football Hall of Fame. The house is privately owned and not open to the public. It is included in the Enfield National Register Historic District.

Through its leaders and members, Union Baptist Church has made significant contributions to the early civil rights movement on the local and state levels. The Reverend John C. Jackson, who began his ministry at the church in 1922, worked tirelessly to open employment opportunities for African Americans, especially for teachers and social workers. C. Edythe Taylor, a member of the church, was the first African American teacher in the Hartford public school system. Other members were the first African Americans in the city to serve on the school board, on the welfare board, and with the police department. In 1943, Jackson helped establish the Connecticut Inter-Racial Commission, now the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. The church is a life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and created the local chapter of the Urban League. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Only a few slaves remained in Connecticut by the time the state passed its full emancipation law in 1848. Apparently, several of these individuals were determined too aged to care for themselves and therefore continued with their former owners. It is believed that Nancy Toney, a former slave of the Chaffee/Loomis family of Windsor, was the last survivor of this group in Connecticut. When she died in 1857, she was buried in Palisado Cemetery. The grave is at the rear of the cemetery, located on the left side of the road in an area with few markers.

This property was purchased by Joseph Rainey on May 20, 1874, and it was owned by him for the remainder of his life. It was used by his family as a summer residence. Rainey is best known for being the first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving for the State of South Carolina. He was elected to five terms, holding office from 1870 to 1879, and during this period introduced petitions for the passage of civil rights legislation that would guarantee African Americans their full constitutional rights. He dramatized his stand on the issue of access to public accommodations by his refusal to leave the dining room of a hotel in Suffolk, Virginia, forcing the owner to remove him from the premises. The Rainey family was active in the First Church of Windsor, and in 1876 Rainey spoke at the town's observance of the American Centennial celebration. The house is privately owned and not opened to the public.

Located in the center of this cemetery are graves of a number of African Americans who served in the Civil War. These can be found by taking the entrance next to the building on Main Street and following the paved drive to a path. Between this path and another located a short distance to its right are stones marking the burials of six or more men who served in Connecticut's all-black Twenty-Ninth Regiment. There are also graves here of African Americans who served in other Civil War units. Nearby is the stone of James Law with the inscription "Born a slave in Virginia, Died in Hartford 1881, the Freedom of the Lord".

The Solders and Sailors Monument (Memorial) honors those from Hartford who served in the Civil War. A marker noting the contributions of African Americans in that conflict has been added to the monument. On display in the nearby State Capitol are two banners that were used by Connecticut's all-black Twenty-Ninth Regiment. The Capitol is open to the public.

While there are many structures in the Southern states which are attributed to the craftsmanship of African Americans, few such buildings exist in New England. One example, however, is the Walter Bunce House, constructed by Alpheus Quincy. Born in June 1774, Quincy dealt in real estate in southeastern Connecticut along with his father and brother. As a stonemason, he built several fieldstone houses for prominent citizens and numerous dams in Manchester. The Walter Bunce House is the only fieldstone dwelling constructed by Quincy that still stands today.

This area was once occupied by the only Shaker settlement in Connecticut. Dissenting from many activities of American society, the Shakers were associated with reform movements, including feminism, pacifism, and abolitionism. The diary of one member records the visits of fugitive slaves to the settlement, including Sojourner Truth, who spoke at the Meeting House on Shaker Road. Now owned by the State of Connecticut and administered by the Department of Correction, the Meeting House was built in 1827 and is sited adjacent to Shaker Road. The entire Shaker complex is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), an antislavery novel of enormous impact in the United States, had lifelong associations with Hartford. She permanently moved to the city in 1864 and resided at 73 Forest Street from 1873 until her death in 1896. Her home is operated as a museum by the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, which maintains a significant research library with collections that focus on nineteenth-century literature and social history, with particular emphasis on race relations, women's issues, architecture, and decorative arts. The Stowe House is listed on the Register of Historic Places and open to the public.

Dr. Frank T. Simpson was born in Alabama in 1907, graduated from Tougaloo College, and moved to Hartford in 1929. He was active in social work in the city and in January 1944 became the first employee of the Connecticut Inter-Racial Commission, one of the first state civil rights organizations in the United States. Simpson eventually became executive secretary, and during his years with the agency, now known as the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, he worked to end discrimination in education, housing, unions, and employment. Simpson purchased his house in 1952 and resided there until his death in 1974. Built in 1913 near Keney Park (then under construction), the house is on the National Register of Historic Places and is privately owned and not open to the public.

At this site was a village made up of Native Americans, African Americans, and whites who in their time were considered outcasts. The village was established ca. 1740 by Molly Barber, a white woman from Wethersfield, Connecticut, and her husband, James Chaugham, a Narragansett Indian from Block Island in Long Island Sound. They moved to the northwestern Connecticut wilderness to escape the wrath of Molly Barber's father. The community was abandoned around 1860 after nearly 120 years of occupation. Today, as an archaeological site inside People's State Forest, it commemorates people who lived on the margins of society. They were ordinary individuals who created an extra-ordinary multicultural community. This site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

A community of African Americans developed in the Hayden Station area during the nineteenth century. One of the religious and social centers for this community was the Archer Memorial Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church. Its first building was constructed under the guidance of the Reverend Dennis Scott White, who received financial assistance from a local philanthropist, Frederick Thrall. The church was located next to a pine grove north of Hayden Station Road and Pond Road; the Reverend White conducted popular camp meetings in the grove during the 1880s and 1890s. The pond nearby was used by the town for swimming and ice-skating and by the congregation for baptismal services. The present church building was erected in 1982.

The Freedom Trail Quilt project and the display of the quilts in the Connecticut State Library's Museum of Connecticut History represent an acknowledgement by public and private groups of the great significance of the Freedom Trail story within the history of Connecticut and the nation.

Fort Griswold is one of the few locations in Connecticut where a Revolutionary War battle took place. The American defenders, greatly outnumbered, were local militia for the most part and included two African Americans: Jordan Freeman and Lambert Latham. During the battle, Freeman helped spear a British officer, an incident depicted on a marker inside the fort. Freeman was later killed in the fighting. When the Americans surrendered, the British began to massacre the unarmed defenders. Before the British officers could halt their troops, Latham and a number of other Americans had died. Fort Griswold is on the National Register of Historic Places and open to the public.

This imposing late Georgian-style house was purchased by Prudence Crandall in 1831 to be a private academy for local young women and men. When she admitted Sarah Harris, an African American student, Crandall found that parents of white students objected. In April 1833, she opened her house as a boarding school for young African American women, an action which led to harassment by neighbors, passage of a state law against her work, and her being jailed for one night. Through two court trials and an appeal to the state's Supreme Court of Errors, Crandall continued to operate her school. Only after a violent attack on the house on the night of September 9, 1834, did she agree to close the school and send her students home. In the United States during the years leading up to the Civil War, the Crandall incident was one of many that helped solidify attitudes against slavery. However, Crandall's effort to provide integrated and equal education in this house was a rarity for the times. In 1995, Prudence Crandall was designated as Connecticut's State Heroine. The Crandall House, a National Historic Landmark, is a museum open to the public.

Located in the center of New London and surrounding the seventeenth-century Joshua Hempstead House, the Hempstead Historic District includes houses that were purchased by free African Americans in the 1840s. These properties were sold by Hempstead descendants, who were abolitionists, to Savillion Haley, who believed that African Americans deserved adequate housing as well as whites. African Americans of colonial New London had already lived in this area, and with these new purchases and later home building by African Americans, organizations important to the community's interests developed. One of these is Shiloh Baptist Church, which is now located on Garvin Street, named for early twentieth-century African American leader Albert Garvin. The District is on the National Register of Historic Places.

During 1803-1804, the "Old District School House for Colored Children" was established behind the Congregational Church near Colchester's town green, predating any other attempt in Connecticut to provide educational opportunities specifically for African American youth. Although racially segregated in that white children attended a district school inside Bacon Academy, the African American school was nonetheless famous throughout the state for the uniqueness of its mission. It attracted students from outside the bounds of Colchester. One of its graduates was Amos Beman, who was later associated with Hartford's Talcott Street Congregational Church and New Haven's Temple Street Congregational Church, both of which are included on the Freedom Trail. The school closed in 1848 as its students found acceptance at Bacon Academy and other local schools. While no longer extant, the school is depicted in the sketch of Colchester's green in John Warner Barber's Connecticut Historical Collections (1835).

In the 1830s a new county jail was built in Norwich between Cedar and Fountain Streets north of the business district, an event which made the area less appealing to wealthier families. Because of the lower property values and proximity to business and employment, a number of African Americans families built houses in what became Jail Hill. Among these families were the Williamses, Harrises, Spelmans, and Smiths. Members of these families were active in the antislavery movement in Connecticut, and after the Civil War they provided teachers in the North as well as the South. Several daughters from these families attended Prudence Crandall's school in Canterbury. The Underground Railroad was active in Norwich, although there is little information available on how Jail Hill residents worked in this endeavor. One escaped slave who resided here was James L. Smith, who wrote an autobiography in 1881 (see Five Black Lives). Two of Smith's daughters graduated from Norwich Free Academy and were teachers in Washington D.C. The black community remained in the Jail Hill area into the early 1900s.

Grove Street Cemetery. A simple rectangular marble gravestone marks the resting place of Thomas L. Taylor, an African American sailor who served with the U.S. Navy on the Union's ironclad ship U.S.S. Monitor when it fought the Confederate ironclad Merrimac, during the Civil War. Taylor is recorded as being the last survivor of that famous battle. He died on March 7, 1932 at age 84.

Lyman Trumbull, a grandson of Benjamin Trumbull, was born and reared in this house, which is still on its original site. Later a United States senator from Illinois, Lyman Trumbull was one of the founders of the Republican Party and in 1865 helped author the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that ended slavery in the nation. The house is included in the Colchester Village National Register Historic District.

Isaac Glasko, a man of mixed Native American and African American heritage, purchased land in 1806 and established a blacksmith shop in what is now the center of Glasgo. He harnessed waterpower to a triphammer and produced farming and carpentry tools. When the whaling industry was at its height, Glasko specialized in whaling implements, for which he held several patents. His harpoons, lances, spades, and mining knives were well known in ports of New England. Glasko's daughter, Eliza, attended the Prudence Crandall School in Canterbury in the 1833-1834 period. His house still stands, although it has been considerably altered. The graves of Isaac Glasko and his wife are in a nearby but not easily accessible cemetery.

Among the displays at Mystic Seaport, renowned for its maritime village and working craftspeople, is the ship Charles W. Morgan, last of the nineteenth-century wooden whaling vessels. Connected with this ship are information and displays noting the role of Connecticut's African Americans in the state's important maritime industries . Studies have shown that in addition to African Americans, Native Americans and other diverse groups made 50 percent of whaling crews in the 1840s. The Charles W. Morgan is a National Historic Landmark, and Mystic Seaport is open to the public.

Anna Louise James (1886-1977), licensed in Connecticut as a pharmacist in 1911, operated her pharmacy from that year until 1967, when she retired. James was the first African American woman, and one of the first women, to become a pharmacist in the state. She was also among the first women who registered to vote when women's suffrage was passed in 1920. In 1974, the Old Saybrook Veterans of Foreign Wars gave James its Citizen of the Year award. This site is also the birthplace of James' niece, Harlem Renaissance writer Ann Petry (born 1908), whose most famous work was the novel The Street. This building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is privately owned and not open to the public.

First Church Cemetery. The cemetery, located next to the First Church, contains the graves of Venture Smith (1729-1805) and several members of his family. Smith was captured as a child in Africa and brought to Connecticut, where he was sold as a slave. He dictated a pamphlet about his experiences that can be read in the book Five Black Lives. Despite being a slave, Smith was able to work at other jobs so that he earned money to buy his freedom and that of his wife and children. One of his sons served in the American Revolution. His wife is buried next to him, and nearby is the grave of another son, Solomon, who served in the War of 1812. Venture's granddaughter, who died in 1902, is here as well. These stones are located near the wall that is next to the church, about halfway back to Route 151.

The U.S. Custom House, built in 1833 from a design by architect Robert Mills, was where Africans were brought from the Spanish slave ship Amistad by the U. S. Coast Guard on August 27, 1839. Although the ship remained in New London for more than a year, the captives stayed for less than a week and were transferred to the New Haven jail. One African youth who died during the brief New London stay was buried in an unmarked grave in the city's Third Burying Ground. A marker on the front of the U.S. Custom House highlights a separate case in which an escaped slave won his freedom in 1850 through the legal efforts of Augustus Brandegee and the custom collector, John Mather. When asked if he wanted to be free, the man replied, "Free!" The U.S. Customs House is on the National Register of Historic Places and open to the public under the direction of the New London Maritime Society.

The seventeenth-century Joshua Hempstead House is one of two historic houses in New London's Hempstead Historic District open to the public. Owned by the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, it contains a family archives of early abolitionist papers. Surrounding the Hempstead House, the Hempstead Historic District includes houses that were purchased by free African Americans in the 1840s. The District is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Freedom Trail Quilt project and the display of the quilts in the Connecticut State Library's Museum of Connecticut History represent an acknowledgement by public and private groups of the great significance of the Freedom Trail story within the history of Connecticut and the nation.

Connecticut General Assembly authorized the designation of some forty public and private historic properties to form a network which would convey the dramatic and important story of Connecticut’s African-American experience – the Connecticut Freedom Trail. Included are historic properties which have been deemed worthy for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, National Register of Historic Landmarks and the Connecticut State Register of Historic Places. Among the gravesites, monuments, homes and other structures included are sites associated with the Underground Railroad, the Amistad Case, and such notable persons as Paul Robeson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Prudence Crandall.

In 1997, a grass roots citizens group of interested volunteers from every corner of the State came together to form the Freedom Trail Planning Committee. They dedicated their time and efforts to creating a lasting tribute to the Connecticut Freedom Trail through one of the most traditional of American art forms – quilting. Four quilts, representing each region of Connecticut, were completed in 1998.

Funding for the Connecticut Freedom Trail was provided and administered by the Connecticut Historical Commission and Department of Economic and Community Development, Tourism Division, 1999.

The Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism graciously granted permission for the State Library to use, in this web exhibit, verbatim and paraphrased descriptions of the individual squares from the brochure produced by one of its predecessor agencies, the Connecticut Historical Commission.